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Mike Pompeo played an important role during the Trump administration in shifting America’s China policy to one of confrontation, but he had to wait several years to have the impact he wanted. First as Trump’s director of the Central Intelligence Agency and then as his Secretary of State, Pompeo saw China as America’s most dangerous challenger. But for the first few years in office, Trump was focused on negotiating a trade deal with China and often courted Xi Jinping. As Pompeo wrote in his memoir, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, Trump “was more inclined to view power through a financial lens. The question was constantly applied to international power dynamics: “My Mike, who’s got the money?” The spread of the coronavirus from China to the U.S. — along with an upcoming election — changed Trump’s perspective on China and gave Pompeo and other hawks the opening they needed. Over the last year or so of the administration, Pompeo worked to label the oppression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang as genocide, to send Keith Krach, the highest-ranking official in decades to Taiwan, and to strip Hong Kong of trade preferences after China asserted control of the city, among other actions. Pompeo now is mulling a run for president and in 2022 raised $8.8 million in political contributions for his Champion American Values Political Action Committee, or CAVPAC. He is also a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute. This interview is part of Rules of Engagement, a series by Bob Davis, who covered the U.S.-China relationship at The Wall Street Journal starting in the 1990s. In these interviews, Davis asks current and former U.S. officials and policymakers what went right, what went wrong and what comes next.

Q: In your book you give the Trump administration an A+ on China compared to recent administrations, but a D+ on getting the outcomes you wanted. What do you think you did well and where do you think you came up short?

A: We pulled the fire alarm.

The Chinese Communist Party is serious and capable and focused. They’ve been at war with the United States, at least economically, for four decades. We laid out the multi-vectored attack on the United States from the Chinese Communist Party. No administration had ever done that. 

The first step is recognition of the problem set and identification of the levers which one can pull to achieve victory. We then began to set up the course of action. We did work on Huawei. We closed a spying operation inside the United States. [Editor’s note: The U.S. ordered China to shut its Houston consulate in July 2020 for allegedly conducting espionage there. China retaliated by closing the U.S. consulate in Chengdu.] We began to call out Chinese operations in our institutions of higher learning. In each of these confrontational spaces, we began to lay out a strategy for victory for the United States.

I’m completely convinced that no other administration would have done that.

The reason I gave the low grade on execution is that the clock ran out. We could only do so much so fast. This is going to be a years-long process. And there was much work that remained.

In any number of passages of your book, you suggest some frustration with Trump’s focus on trade and the economy when it came to China. You said he was more inclined to view power through a financial lens. What didn’t get done as a result of that focus? 

Everything else. In the campaign, he talked about the trading balance, and we were right to focus on the economic aspects of the relationship. It was the President’s priority. He wanted to go get that right and did the Phase One trade deal.

He also saw Taiwan through the prism of the trade deal too. What did that mean for you? The administration armed Taiwan, but presumably you felt that there was a lot more that could have been done.

Yeah, that’s right. There absolutely was. But it was a work in progress. 

We had to convince not just President Trump, but lots of the Commerce department, Treasury department officials — everybody. We had to swing the pendulum of the entire federal bureaucracy toward the recognition of the challenge from the Chinese Government. It wasn’t about one person. 

But President Trump’s singular focus for most of his time in office was trade, until such time as the [corona]virus came and he began to talk about that as well.

Why did you wait until the second to the last day before you left office to say China committed genocide in Xinjiang?

You can’t imagine the pushback inside the State Department. 

And it was incredibly important to get it right. You want to make sure you have the factual predicate, the moral case and the legal parameters all right. One does not declare genocide willy-nilly. One should do it thoughtfully. 

I wanted to make sure that every voice was heard. We did that, we worked our way through it. We had like four or five different organizations inside State that felt [this issue] was in their bailiwick and I wanted to make sure we heard from them. They had widely differing opinions about making that judgment. In the end, I concluded that this was not only the right thing to do, but a necessary thing to do. And we got it done before we left.

Was it also done to freeze the next administration into taking a similar view? 

Not at all. Just, so you know, that’s not how I roll. 

This wasn’t about locking anybody in. We had Afghanistan right. They [the Biden administration] screwed it up. We had Iran right. They screwed it up. You don’t lock subsequent administrations in. That’s one of the great things about America. The next administration gets to do the things they want to do.

I did lots in those last three weeks. We allowed Taiwanese diplomats to meet with [U.S. officials]. We got information declassified related to coronavirus. We did work on Iran making sure that everybody understood that Al-Qaeda’s headquarters was in Tehran. 

We were busy. I only got a thousand days.

After you left the administration, you visited Taiwan in March 2022 and called for the recognition of Taiwan as an independent nation. Why? 

Xi Jinping has upset the existing status quo. We need to respond to that. Don’t go to a podium and say, “We still believe in the preexisting order before Xi Jinping.” 

When he changed the status quo, there should be a response. My judgment is that the right response is to recognize the reality that Taiwan is in fact a sovereign, independent nation, not part of the political apparatus of the Chinese Communist Party. I think it’s clear to everyone that’s true.

I was able to go to Taiwan in spite of being banned from China. My passport cleared. That’s the typical sine qua non of sovereignty. 

The same way that we deterred Vladimir Putin from taking an inch of Europe on our watch, is the same set of actions that can convince Xi Jinping that it’s not worth the gamble to try to violate Taiwanese sovereignty.

We’ve made the mistake of being too timid in acknowledging the reality. And if there’s one thing that we tried to do in the Trump administration, it was to accept things as they really were. And the reality is that Taiwan is in fact not part of China. And we should acknowledge that.

Although when you were in office, the administration didn’t make an announcement of that sort.

Yep. It’s true.

Do you think Taiwan is more or less secure after Nancy Pelosi and Keith Krach (Undersecretary of State in the Trump administration) visited Taiwan?

Oh, these visits don’t have anything to do with Taiwan’s security.

No? The criticism usually is that if China is thinking of invading, these visits might push them into invading more quickly because Taiwan could get stronger over time.

These are visits of independent U.S. actors to Taiwan. For someone to buy the Chinese Communist Party’s line, which you just suggested — it’s exactly what Xi Jinping will tell you. He’d say, “Oh my gosh, you provoked me.”

This is pure pretext. They act as if the United States has conducted an act of war. It’s not remotely that. The Chinese Communist Party, by the way, continues to ratchet up its pressure on Taiwan. It does it on the days that an American senior leader visits and on the days that he or she doesn’t.

And so, no, I don’t think those visits are the things that are going to cause the Chinese Communist Party to do what they’re doing. We can watch them every day — even today. No senior American is visiting Taiwan today. The Chinese Communist Party, I am confident, launched a missile test today. And they’ll probably do one tomorrow.

You don’t think [events like the visits or statements supporting Taiwanese independence] factor into their calculation of whether or when to invade? 

Not at all. Their calculation is whether there is an American leader or set of Western leaders prepared to make the cost of an invasion exceed the benefits. The same way that we deterred Vladimir Putin from taking an inch of Europe on our watch, is the same set of actions that can convince Xi Jinping that it’s not worth the gamble to try to violate Taiwanese sovereignty.

We spend too much time dissecting simple words instead of backing them up with actions that the bad guys of the world actually respect. They understand power and power alone. 

This is classic deterrence in its purest, most brutal, powerful sense. You have to convince your adversary that the costs exceed the benefits.

What is required to do that?

Well, we did it. And the Biden administration has managed to do it so far too. But I would argue they need to continue that.

There are lots of pieces [to deterrence]. One I will call the hardware. The second is the soft power things that need to be done to make sure the Taiwanese are capable and ready, and the Chinese can see that. And then there’s lots of other pieces. There’s an economic component to it too. TSMC [the giant Taiwanese computer chip maker] sits in that place. It’s very important to everyone, including the Chinese economy, that TSMC continues to produce. 

And then there are our friends and partners in the region. I think the Biden administration has done a nice job of keeping the Quad [a grouping of the U.S., India, Japan and Australia] together and building on it. I fully credit them for that. 

And whether it’s the Vietnamese or the Malaysians, or the Singaporean or the Laotians, Cambodians, the Indians, the Japanese, South Koreans — they all need to come be part of the coalition that will convince Xi Jinping and those around him that they need to conform to these [peaceful] ideas. When [Chinese leaders] do, we will wish them all wonderful lives. I want good things for the Chinese people.

Some of your critics, particularly in China, say you called for Taiwanese independence for the money. They say you got $150,000 for the speech and that’s what motivated you. What would you say to your critics?

My record on China long predates the time that I left the State Department.

And the payment for the speech, is that an accurate number? 

 My record is unequivocal.

Should the U.S. drop its policy of strategic ambiguity concerning whether the U.S. would defend Taiwan if China invaded? And do you feel that President Biden effectively has done that by saying, I think, four times that the U.S. would intervene?

I think this idea of strategic ambiguity is a parlor game of Washington DC.

When President Biden said that, I wish he had followed up with deeds. We spend too much time dissecting simple words instead of backing them up with actions that the bad guys of the world actually respect. They understand power and power alone. President Biden’s statements were often followed by walk-backs, semi walk-backs, and some confusion.

One needs to be very clear when one speaks about these things. Administrations should speak with a single voice, even though there are often disagreements, as there was in ours. In the end, the President of the United States is the one who sets the direction and the tone. He should not only be speaking with a clarity that is supported by his team, but the actions taken by his team ought to match those words as well.

Would you advise other potential GOP candidates to go to Taiwan and to make a similar statement supporting Taiwanese independence? Would you advise former President Trump to do that as part of his campaign?

My view is pretty consistent. This is what we all ought to do – every American, whether they’re candidates for President of the United States, from either party. It’s the right thing to do for the American people.

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